f.lux

Working long hours in front of the computer has negative effects on your eyesight. The screen’s brightness and the blue light particularly, puts a strain on your eyes, especially if you are using the PC during nighttime. There are solutions such as protective glasses, but a more convenient alternative is using a dedicated software utility such as f.lux.

The main perk of f.lux is that once set up, it can automatically adjust the screen's brightness and color to the night or day conditions, without your intervention.

At first launch, it requires you to enter your current location (the nearest city will do) to determine your local time and get information about the lighting conditions, depending on the time of the sunset and the sunrise.

In other words, once your position is set on the map, the application calculates the precise time of the day and puts your PC on a 24-hour transition schedule. It then renders the appropriate light tones and intensity depending on this schedule.

It is worth mentioning that f.lux enables you to preview an entire day’s lighting changes in just a few seconds. If you find that you are not satisfied with the settings, you can go back and make more adjustments.

On the other hand, you have the possibility to adjust the screen lighting and colors manually, which is convenient in case you are in an environment with special lighting conditions. f.lux comes with predefined configurations for reducing eyestrain, working late at night, using the PC in a low-light environment, and more.

There are also predefined configuration modes in f.lux. For instance, the “Movie Mode” preserves the colors and the shadow details but still displays the entire screen in warmer color tones that balances powerful contrasts.

Getting blinded by an overly-bright monitor during sunset or later at night is definitely not pleasant so an application such as f.lux is useful to anyone. It adjusts the screen light and colors to match the ambient light, sparing your eyes from making an effort to watch the monitor.

Moreover, if you need to have the monitor display images in their original hues and tones when working on a graphical project for instance, you can easily disable f.lux.